Inslee sends letter detailing Wash. legal pot plan

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a letter this week detailing the efforts the state is taking as it moves forward with creating rules for a voter-approved legal market for marijuana.

Inslee wrote the "the world is watching" both Colorado and Washington as the two states implement last fall's votes that approved the recreational use of marijuana.

Voters in Washington state and Colorado in November approved measures legalizing the recreational use of the drug, allowing use by adults over 21 and to create state-licensed systems of growers, processors and retail stores that sell state-taxed pot.

But because the creation of those regulatory schemes poses a possible conflict with federal law, which outlaws marijuana, the states have been moving ahead with implementation without certainty of whether the federal government will try to block them.